PSA: The default value of sdp_semantics is about to change.

[Henrik Boström]

Hello,

TL;DR: Please make sure to specify sdp_semantics when constructing your PeerConnection as its default value will soon change.

While the web platform has unanimously defaulted to the spec-compliant Unified Plan for several years and Plan B has become deprecated on the web, the C++ library has lagged behind with the default value being set to SdpSemantics::kPlanB. Despite Plan B being on the path to becoming legacy code, this has caused some users to depend on Plan B without even realizing it.

We intend to change the default to kUnifiedPlan in third_party/webrtc very soon.

In order not to cause subtle bugs for those who do not specify it when the default changes, we'll soon make the app CHECK-crash if RTCConfiguration::sdp_semantics is not specified when constructing a PeerConnection.

We'll temporarily make the default value kNotSpecified and then in a few more weeks we'll change the default to kUnifiedPlan and delete the kNotSpecified value.

Our efforts are tracked here:

- Changing the default: https://crbug.com/webrtc/11121

- Removing Plan B from Chromium: https://crbug.com/857004

- Removing Plan B from WebRTC (blocked on the above and other usage): https://crbug.com/webrtc/13528

Cheers

[Henrik Boström]

Update: The default value has now changed to Unified Plan as previously announced!

On the M99 cut date the default was "not specified" (=crash!), but for tip-of-tree and for M100 the default is Unified Plan.

So if you have an up-to-date version of WebRTC and you are using Unified Plan, you no longer have to explicitly set the sdp_semantics value.